We have had an unusual week of warm and cloudy weather, culminating with a short rain shower on the 30th June! Not unprecedented but certainly unusual for this time of the year. Fortunately, it was far too little to do any damage to the roads and it hasn’t impacted wildlife movements; the gradual drying of the park continues.
I also spent a fair bit of time doing photoshoots this week, some for product websites and also a village shoot on commission for a local lodge. I am training a local photographer (@jozy_creative_photography on Instagram) so Jozy and I have been working on these projects together. Jozy already has some excellent camera skills, so I have been developing these and assisting him with business skills to help him build a client base and advise him on quoting, costing and invoicing. I hope he’ll be able to build a great business covering weddings, events and local reportage in the Mfuwe area. I’ll be doing some more features on his work in due course.
And, so, as always, on to the week’s images. Between photoshoots and running home-school for our daughter, I’ve still fit in lots of park time this week. Quite a bit of it has been spent sitting at the site of the Crowned Eagles nest (see feature and a recent blog), which sometimes yielded images and sometimes nothing at all!!
I spent a couple of hours with small herd of giraffes who were feeding languidly among the lush vegetation…
The light has superb quality at this time of year with strong contrast between darks and lights.
And of course, there are the ever-attendant oxpeckers.
At one point, the giraffes scattered and I wondered what had startled them….turned out to be a warthog moving fast in their direction!
Close up with a herd of buffalo….briefly…before they scattered into the thickets.
Unusually, this guinea fowl was sitting on an exposed branch while the rest of the flock foraged below. I wondered if it had seen something we hadn’t so I watched for a while, but eventually it came down to join the rest.
When you sit somewhere for a long time, animals become used to your presence and sometimes come closer to investigate. So it was with the extended time that I spent at the crowned eagles nest this week….a small herd of buffalo emerged from the thickets, raised their noses to scent me and then began to approach!
But the main event of this week was special time spent with Africa’s largest eagles. The pair are still nest building and regularly carry large branches from the surrounding trees to add to the nest. To break off material for the nest, they locate a likely branch and then dive towards it, turning at the last moment and grabbing it with their talons. It is a seriously impressive display of agility for a large bird that is almost 1 metre from bill to tail tip!
Perched, they are absolutely resplendent.
At the nest.Thank you for reading. All the best, stay well and see you next week.
